Question about symbol libraries vs footprint libraries

Schematic Library Symbols
1

This is more a curiosity than anything else. Each footprint in KiCad is an individual file with extension “.kicad_mod”, and a “library” is just a directory with name ending in “.pretty” that contains all of the “.kicad_mod” files of the footprints that are in that library.

However, the schematic symbols are entries within a library file whose name ends in “.kicad_sym”. That is, a schematic symbol library is a file that contains multiple symbols.

Is there a reason why the two different systems were chosen to organize the two library types? I can see advantages and disadvantages to both (personally I prefer the directory containing individual files for each symbol approach taken by the footprints), but I’m curious as to why a common approach is not taken to both.

2

It’s probably mostly for “historical” reasons, but I have read a few times that symbols are combined into a single library file for performance reasons too. But because either method has it’s advantages and disadvantages, there already are proposals to support all combinations and make it “symmetrical” again.

3

Many thanks! That’s interesting to see the interest in supporting both systems. When I used to work with Altium, It was recommended for some types of repository-based library management to use the one-symbol/footprint-per-file approach. Unless there was a significant performance hit, I would be interested in adopting the footprint-based approach for the schematic libraries.

4

If you like it, you can give those gitlab issues an upvote.